VALENCIA. The NBA, Valencia City Council and Valencia Basket announced this Wednesday that the second edition of the Junior NBA European Finals, the youth basketball tournament in which young people aged 15 or younger from six European countries participate, will be held in the L’Alqueria facilities of the ‘taronja’ club from Wednesday June 26 to Saturday June 29.
The event, which is supported by Kellogg, will feature men’s and women’s divisions each made up of six teams of 12 young players from England, Italy, Lithuania, Spain, the Netherlands and one more country to be confirmed later.
Additionally, these players will also participate in life skills sessions, skills challenges, basketball clinics, a three-point contest, an All-Star game and community support activities.
The announcement was made this Wednesday during an event in Valencia attended by Neal Meyer, vice president of NBA Basketball Operations in Europe and the Middle East, Rocío Gil, Sports Councilor for the Valencia City Council; and Enric Carbonell, General Director of Valencia Basket, along with the former Croatian player Dino Radja and the former Serbian player Sonja Vasic, European ambassadors of the NBA and the WNBA, respectively, and who subsequently participated in Junior NBA clinics in local schools and in the L’Alqueria facilities.
In addition, the NBA and the City Council took advantage of the announcement of this agreement to inaugurate two newly renovated basketball courts for the local community and where a 3×3 game was organized in which invited content creators participated.
Neal Meyer was “delighted to bring together elite youth teams from all over Europe in Valencia” for the second edition of this competition. “On behalf of the NBA, I want to thank the Valencia City Council and the Valencia Basket Club for their continued support in making this event a reality and for helping to renovate these courts that will provide safe spaces for young people to play all year round” , he pointed out.
“For the Valencia City Council it is a pride to associate the name of our city with the most well-known and recognized brand in world basketball, the NBA. The European Under-15 tournament that will bring more than 100 young people to Valencia next June will project our city at an international level,” celebrated Rocío Gil, also happy because the agreement will leave “a sporting legacy” in the city with the renovation of the two aforementioned fields.
Enric Carbonell stressed, for his part, “the importance for Valencia Basket of working with the most important basketball institutions.” “The NBA is and every collaboration of this type helps us grow and make basketball grow,” he commented.
“For us it is very important to host this type of events here, to collaborate in improving a municipal basketball facility like this one and to bring together almost 200 young talents in our Alqueria del Basket next June, something that reinforces it as a basketball generating center and the perfect infrastructure to train future stars,” he added.
Finally, Alba Lage, Marketing Director of ‘Kellanova Spain’, stressed the pride of being “the official partner of the NBA Junior in Europe.” “Being able to support future basketball stars from all over Europe from an initial level is very important for us as they learn the core values of the sport, aligned with our own. We have been betting on basketball for 18 years now, through alliances with various entities in the field of basketball both nationally and internationally and also with the creation of their own social programs,” he noted.
2024-04-10 14:45:55
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